


Three Times Logan Echolls Left Me

by Lexalicious70



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan leaves Neptune for deployment after he's cleared of Carrie's murder, and Dick reflects on other times he's had to say goodbye to the only person who's ever really cared about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Logan Echolls Left Me

Three Times Logan Echolls Left Me 

The first time Logan left me, it was raining hard, like it is now. 

I guess that’s why I’m thinking about it. I don’t think about the past too often if I can help it because that’s usually what sends me running for my happy brownies, but with the rain spattering against the patio door and kitchen windows and the rest of the house filled with quiet, it’s like I can’t help it. I remember Logan’s anger—at his parents, for dying, at Veronica, for leaving Neptune, and at me, for taking him to Bridges and to Dr. Pensky because I could see where he was headed—poured out of him that night like the rain that’s pouring down from the sky right now. There are a lot of people who would probably say that you’ve hit rock bottom when Dick Casablancas thinks you’re partying so hard you need rehab, but my perception of who needs help and who doesn’t is a hell of a lot sharper since that night at the Neptune Grand nine years ago. The night that Cassidy left me. 

Maybe I can’t even count that first time as Logan leaving me because I’m the one who drove him to Bridges and checked him in. He’d been hitting the bottle hard and the drugs even harder, stuff that went way beyond letting you party hardy when you need to. He went through a long line of skanks almost as fast—all blonde like Veronica but with none of her intelligence or fire or sense of justice. Most of them left him broke and blacked out with booze and pills at The Camelot or at the Spinning Aces on the edge of town, which makes the Camelot look like a five-star hotel. That last time, when the manager of the Spinning Aces couldn’t rouse Logan when checkout time came and he called me, I was one of three contacts Logan’s phone had listed. The others were Veronica’s number, which she’d refused to answer since she’s left Neptune, and his sister Trina’s number, which was disconnected. When I got the call, I knew I had to step up. Shit . . . what was left of his family didn’t give a damn and Veronica had been rejecting his calls on the first ring for over a year. I’d deleted her number off his phone about half a dozen times but he always put it back in, addicted to her memory almost as much as he was addicted to the booze and the pills. I hated her that first time he left because of the way he looked me over his shoulder as the nurses at Bridges led him away, the puzzled, angry look in his dark eyes as I signed the papers. I hated her because it was her silence that took him away. He left me for eighteen months that first time. 

The second time Logan left me, it was two years later. He’d been clean and sober for about 22 months and ready to leave for basic training. I drove him again, just like I’d driven him to Bridges, and neither of us said much. A part of me wanted to pull over, knock him out, and toss his unconscious ass into the trunk before he could get on that bus and take off to God knows where just because he’d decided that becoming a Navy pilot was his destiny or whatever. I guess it was because this leaving sucked. It sucked and it hurt—it hurt almost as bad as when Beav had left because there was more than a chance that when Logan got sent overseas on assignment, I’d never see him again. The thought of that made me sicker than the time I ate a ten pack of Taco Time tacos on a dare from Logan, but I never said shit about it. I just gave him a quick hug, the diesel fumes from the buses lining my throat like cheap liquor, accepting his gruff “See you, Dick,” because we both knew it was all he could offer me. 

I didn’t see him for three years after his bus pulled away. His new life took him to Rhode Island for basic and then to Florida for flight training, and then overseas, where he did the Top Gun thing enough times to earn him a shit ton of medals. By that time, I had more or less gotten my own shit together, surfing in a few local heats and earning a few trophies of my own—when I wasn’t partying with some old drinking buddies from college, of course. I guess I always counted on Logan coming back despite the danger, and he didn’t really seem surprised when he came home late last year to find I’d added on an extra room to my beach house for him. He moved in without a lot of discussion, and even though he took up with Carrie a few weeks later to the point where I didn’t see him a lot anyway, I was actually pretty stoked to have him around again. 

Now he’s left me a third time—back to his ship, back to protecting his country. He’s a free man, thanks to Veronica, (who left this morning after thanking me for the cup of coffee I’d made her.) I don’t know how long he’ll be gone this time. I might see him in two months or in two years. He left me a letter though, thanking me for giving him and Veronica a place to be together while he’d been home. He also asked me to look after her and be her friend until he gets back. I don’t know if me and Veronica will ever be buddies in the way that Logan wants, but maybe now that we have Logan’s leaving in common, at least she seems to be accepting me as a part of Logan’s life in a way she never did when they were dating in high school and in college.

All things considered, I think I can return the favor.


End file.
